Here is a list of the books that I read cover-to-cover in 2010. I did not include articles or books which I read only in part. They are grouped loosely according to categories which, like all categories, are fluid and disputable. Within each category, I’ve put the texts that I found most illuminating, inspiring, or intriguing in bold-face print. In some categories, I’ve also indicated the text that I found least appealing (for any number of reasons) by putting the title in brown print.
I would enjoy conversing about any of these books if anyone has thoughts or opinions to share.
Theology:
James Keating and Thomas Joseph White, eds., Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering, 357.
Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology I, 300.
Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers, 223.
David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism, 467.
James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, 254.
Sallie McFague, The Body of God: An Ecological Theology, 274.
Ernst Troeltsch, The Absoluteness of Christianity and the History of Religions, 174.
Arthur D. Yunker, Toward a Theology of Pipesmoking, 73.
Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation, 225.
Adolf von Harnack, What is Christianity?, 301.
Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology, 285.
Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology I: The Triune God, 245.
Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 252.
Walter Rauschenbusch, A Theology for the Social Gospel, 280.
Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology II: The Words of God, 380.
Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, 470.
Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be, 197.
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I.1: The Doctrine of the Word of God, 503.
Graham Ward, Barth, Derrida and the Language of Theology, 258.
Johann Baptist Metz, Faith in History and Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology, 287.
Wolfhart Pannenberg, Anthropology in Theological Perspective, 552.
Karl Barth, The Humanity of God, 96.
Paul F. Knitter, One Earth Many Religions: Multifaith Dialogue and Global Responsibility, 218.
Marjorie Hewitt Suchoki, The Fall to Violence: Original Sin in Relational Theology, 168.
Rosemary Radford Ruether, Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing, 310.
Alastair McFadyen, Bound to Sin: Abuse, Holocaust, and the Christian Doctrine of Sin, 255.
Jean Daniélou, Philon D’Alexandrie, 214.
Anna-Stina Ellverson, The Dual Nature of Man: A Study in the Theological Anthropology of Gregory of Nazianzus, 113.
Thomas H. Tobin, The Creation of Man: Philo and the History of Interpretation, 197.
Simone Weil, Waiting for God, 151.
Celia Deane Drummond and David Clough, eds., Creaturely Theology, 294.
Philosophy:
Slavoj Zizek, The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology, 499.
Georgio Agamben, The Open: Man and Animal, 102.
Kelly Oliver, Animal Lessons: How They Teach Us to Be Human, 364.
Catherine Osborne, Dumb Beasts and Dead Philosophers: Humanity and the Humane in Ancient Philosophy and Literature, 262.
Religious Studies:
John Esposito, Islam: The Straight Path, 335.
Ancient/Medieval texts:
Nemesius of Emessa, On the Nature of Man, 273.
Gregory of Nazianzus, Festal Orations [1, 38, 39, 40, 41, 45], 195.
Augustine, Confessions, 347.
Gregory of Nazianzus, On God and Man: Theological Poetry, 176.
Gregory of Nazianzus, On God and Christ [Orations 27-31 and Letters 101, 102], 175.
Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory Nazianzus [Orations 8, 14, 20, 26, 38, 39, 42, 44, and asst’d poems/letters], 273.
Evagrius of Pontus, Evagrius of Pontus, trans. Robert Sinkewicz [Includes: Foundations of the Monastic Life; To Eulogios; On the Vices Opposed to Virtues; On the Eight Thoughts; The Monk: a Treatise on the Practical Life; To Monks; To Virgins; On thoughts; Chapters on Prayer; Reflections; Exhortations; Thirty Three Ordered Chapters; Maxims], 369.
Evagrius of Pontus, Antirrhetikos, trans. David Brakke, 190.
Evagrius of Pontus, Evagrius Ponticus, trans. A.M. Cassiday [Includes: On the Faith; Great Letter; Letters 7,8,19,20; Foundations; On Thoughts; A Word about Prayer; Scholia on Job; Scholia on Ecclesiastes; On the ‘Our Father’; Scholia on Luke; To the Virgins; Excerpts; Aphorisms; Definitions; On Prayer], 250.
Origen, De Principiis/ Peri Archon, 342.
Philo of Alexandria, De Mundis Opificio, 60.
Philo of Alexandria, De Gigantibus, 10.
Biblical Studies:
Martin Kähler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ, 154.
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins, 357.
Ethics:
Larry Rasmussen, Earth Community, Earth Ethics, 364.
Wesley Smith, A Rat is a Pig is a Dog is a Boy: The Human Cost of the Animal Rights Movement, 310.
Biography/Memoir:
Sara Miles, Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion, 285.
Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness, 286.
Fiction/Literature:
Chaim Potok, The Chosen, 272.
Chaim Potok, My Name is Asher Lev, 369.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, 90.
Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies, 242.
Toni Morrison, Beloved, 277.
C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 382.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, 458.
Shusaku Endo, Silence, 201.
Danielle Ganek, Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him, 275.
Charles Johnson, Oxherding Tale, 176.
Self-Help (Self-defeat?):
Marty Nachel, Home Brewing for Dummies, 391.
eric daryl meyer 
I’m glad that neither of Barth volumes you read this year appear in bold print.
I did quite enjoy the “Humanity of God” essay, but I’m glad that others have taken up that line of thought and pushed it further.
Are you developing an antipathy to Barth?
Barth never did sit quite right with me, and not for lack of effort. Maybe I’ll give it another go when I’m retired.
Eric,
I’m ill-qualified to comment, must less recognize, everything save the fiction/literature section. Further, I realize that you read fiction likely only as a respite. That said, you might enjoy Roberto Bolano and leave the Marquez to, well…yoga crowd. I know Bolano is a bit of the rage among certain literary types and so I hesitate to recommend him (I hesitate to rec. anyone). However (IMO), Bolano’s fiction explores the ways in which language assassinates human desire and a myriad of ways in which language seduces and destroys desire/persons. In say, Savage Detectives, language both separates us from, and ultimately annihilates, the object of desire. Given your interests in the ways in which language and rationality “separates” us…Borges, Bolano, tackle these very things–in language (ah, there’s the rub). Anyway, just a thought. Looking over your list, I add only: when do you sleep/eat/shit/make love? (rhetorical question, that one). Perhaps we’ll have a beer and discuss (fiction that is) in the backyard on Bridge Street one of these days.
I’ll second the Bolano recommendation. He’s a real trip. I read 2666 a year or two ago and still have no idea what happened. He has a little book of poetry called The Romantic Dogs that is equally strange but also has moments of real brilliance.
I’ll check out Bolano, for sure. The recommendations are helpful because I’m a bit of a scavenger when it comes to fiction—grubbing on whatever I come across that doesn’t look too rotten.
Right now I’m in the middle of a Pynchon novel (Gravity’s Rainbow) and I’m working up the courage to take on Moby Dick—which seems to appear all over the place these days (and which I’ve never read).
Let’s make that backyard beer happen!
If Moby Dick is on your radar, by all means go for it…Pynchon huh? you know how to choose easy texts (cough).
Yeah, I’m sure that I’m missing about 90% of what’s going on, but even the tip of the iceberg is interesting enough to keep me going.